For the first time in ten years, WestPapuaMedia is taking a break from regular publication over the next few months as we focus on improving our infrastructure, and work on several innovative new projects that will support credible, quality journalism on the ground in West Papua.

We feel without a current sustainable funding base and savings in the bank, we are unable to ethically provide the correct amount of support currently needed for our brave clandestine stringers and journalists to expose themselves in the field at this point. We are working hard to create the mechanisms so that they are armed always with real time digital security and support when they do venture into the field, and are able to report safely. These mechanism of course, we are working hard to develop so that anyone who needs to tell a story of their world – in Papua to begin with – is able to do so, and have their voice heard, and treated with respect.

Currently the amount of fake media, recycled
and out of context torture photos and misreporting is creating a situation where social media is now dismissed by the powerful around the world as rumour and propaganda. The work we are doing over the next few months is going to support the capacity of West Papuan people inside West Papua to get their own voices heard with the stories they want to tell. Not the stories that outsiders want told for their own clickbait donation agendas, or misreported, or not told full stop.

We want to be able to support every rally, every campaign, and to be able to tell every story West Papuans want to tell the the world, especially of those sectors of the population that don’t get a voice currently.

We will of course continue to assist foreign journalist to bypass the media ban in West Papua by assisting with SAFE organisation and fixing for undercover stories. However our main focus is to continue our pioneering work of the last ten years ensure that Jakarta’s Foreign Media Ban is redundant, through the effective and strong real time multimedia reporting capacity of indigenous Papuan journalists is supported.

So our current work over the next few months will be focused on organising West Papua Media’s back archives, our digital media assets, and also restructuring our project to deliver a more robust, intuitive and involving website, with the ability for people on the ground to collaborate with us, safely, with their identities and locations safe.

We will be creating an innovative new digital asset library, with new technologies of verification and safe asset tracking (that will not put the creator’s security at risk) that will ensure that any creative content, whether photos, videos, or any content and artwork provided to us, will be able to be tracked across the internet, and to enable licensing that will mean money will flow back to the creators so they can sustain their work (and get new equipment etc), or to enable training and supply to new witness journalists to operate effectively and safely.

We have a big checklist of tasks to get through, and welcome anyone’s assistance to make this a reality. Please contact us via our contact page if you would like to assist. You can of course donate to us via a variety of methods, just visit westpapuamedia.info/donate . We really need your generous financial support to enable this to be reborn in early 2017. A major crowdfunding campaign will begin late October, and will will be on a contributor and collaborator hunt – especially those who would like to mentor and support individual Papuan journalists in their continued development.

Until then, our work includes:

rewriting and translating for our side project “eyeSAFEMoJO – the Safe Witnesss Journalism Project“, which can be found at isafemojo.press , with tasks including:

a list of SAFEApps for enabling journalists and human rights workers on the ground in Papua to collect information safely using mobile tools, without threat of state surveillance and threats by using these unsafe apps and social media;

A new Safe Witness Journalism Guide, with graphical how-to’s and updated tactics specific to West Papua with lessons learnt from the last few years of changes in the media environment;

Developing a new series of training curricula for digital security and practical safety for frontline clandestine witness and professional journalists to be rolled out for 2017.

We are really going to need your help to bring these about of course, and will be outlining more in coming months, so keep your ears tuned for announcements on our twitter feed. Remember to please donate generously at westpapuamedia.info/donate

In the meantime, some articles will continue to come across, and you can keep up with our partner content by following the feeds on the sidebar at westpapuamedia.info

For up to the minute WestPapuaMedia tweets, please refer to embedded Twitter box below.

For crisis monitoring through our #LiveUpdatesPapua feed, please refer to the twitter box on the right sidebar. —->

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Plastic waste threaten turtles ecosystem – IST Sorong, Jubi – The Pacific Aquatic Resources Research Center (P2SP2) of Papua University confirmed that the turtle population in Kaimana, West Papua province is almost extinct. It is said only seven species of turtles in the world and six of them are from Indonesia. Four from the six…

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The protest action of PT. FI workers in front of Mimika Court on Thursday (April 20th) afternoon – IST Jakarta, Jubi – Two of the five victims of Thursday shooting incident in front of the Mimika Court, Mimika Regency, Papua April 20th 2017 who had been treated at Mimika General Hospital were allowed to go…

But in short, we cannot publish because we cannot ethically provide our crew on the ground with the support needed to keep them safe and in contingency should they come under threat. WestPapuaMedia also simply does not currently have the personnel free at the moment due to critical background journalism support work we are doing.

That said, we do wish to be able to cover critical developments still, and still provide a voice to those people who need it. WestPapuaMedia is urgently looking for some more volunteers to take on the following roles

translation from Indonesian into English, and from English to Indonesian (with technical language capacity);

Editorial roles for continued publication of our partner content over the next few months, cooperation with livemonitoring teams for major mobilisations leading up to December 1, as well as a few basic articles of major breaking news (no investigations until we relaunch in late January 2017 unless you wish to do them).

We require folks with a commitment to high journalistic standards, accuracy and ethical publishing. If you can help, please visit westpapuamedia.info/contact and get in touch with us.

WPM needs your help as the current team is flat out developing secure tools, apps and training/tutorial resources to assist frontline and citizen journalists, with much of this needed before December 1, and of course our major work, Project FiveARM Secure Crisis Field Reporting Toolhttps://fivearm.isafemojo.press (we have been awarded a small grant by the Walkley Grants for Innovation in Journalism, but we cannot use any of that funding for WPM work).

However as ever, WestPapuaMedia needs your help in staving off an existential need also. Prior to a major crowdfunding campaign in coming weeks for the new WestPapua.Media portal for 2017 – which is going to allow for much wider involvement for credible reportage than currently is the case – we still must pay for the bills even though we are in effective suspension. We have close to A$1800 in urgent costs coming up over the next few weeks, for the following costs – all before we can launch the 2017 campaign:

yearly server costs,

secure shareroom, file hosting and upload costs,

WordPress hosting costs

FTP costs

Domain registration costs,

as well as site mirroring and anti-DDOS requirements that need to be paid for.

As well as projected transition costs (that we will be crowdfunding for) for the new portal, which we are projecting to cost at least A$7000, plus the secure smartphone and camera support for our crew on the ground ($1500 per journalist per year).

As we are still getting over 5-800 hits a day on archived articles, we know that WestPapuaMedia still proving very useful for researchers and for background investigations. But we rely entire on your support for survival, and even though you cannot see how hard we are working – you will see it shortly as we release testing and new tools and tutorials.

If you can assist us achieving these goals, then your support will be greatly appreciated, and will enable safety support for frontline journalists to be developed much faster (we have significant costs in testing these tools).

New Volunteers in the project are very welcome, and we will be re-requesting individually those wonderful folks who have worked with us in the past as we would LOVE to hear from you again. If you would like to be involved, please drop us a line via the options at https://westpapuamedia.info/contact

Donations are sorely needed at westpapuamedia.info/donate, where you can contribute via paypal (also directly via https://www.paypal.me/donate2WPMedia ), via bitcoin (Bitcoins are very much-needed for secure payments), or directly to our bank account (which also accepts Western Union payments if you are outside Australia).

Increasingly broad mobilisations by the Papuan people in recent years shows that there must be a new assessment of West Papuan as an entity. An entity that should be, must be, recognised as a nation.
Resistance by the Papuan people existed prior to West Papua's integration into Indonesia in 1969, known as Pepera or the so-called "Act of Free Choice", and since that time. However what differentiates the resistance that is currently developing is the method of political mass mobilisations. The current political mass mobilisations are being led or initiated by youth groups such as the Papua Student Alliance (AMP), the West Papua National Committee (KNPB) and the Garda Papua (Papua Guard).
And these youth groups have also greatly developed the understanding that the struggle for Papuan liberation cannot rely on "sympathy" or "international recognition", but must instead depend upon the determined efforts of people's unity and the Papuan nation for its liberation.
In a number of mobilisations, this youth movement has supplanted the "older groups" that were part the armed resistance (the National Liberation Army or TPN and the Free Papua Movement or OPM) that were dividend and fragmented along with other older factions, whether they be part of the Papuan Presidium Council (PDP), the Papua Customary Council (DAP) and the like. In the same manner they have been able to sit together and unite under the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP). Similar unity projects took place in 2005 although they did not last long. The ULMWP as a unity project is more organised compared with earlier attempts.
While in the early years after 2000 the issue of divisions within the movement and the Papuan people between the "interior" and the "coastal" areas coloured the analysis and assessment of West Papua and its movements, in recent years this has become totally irrelevant. Meaning that the unity between Papuan people's groups has become increasingly solid, although attempts at dividing and playing off groups against each other by Jakarta have increased in frequency.
Jakarta's policy of "Special Autonomy" is increasingly understood by the Papuan people as little more than a bribe and illusion. "Special Autonomy" has failed to deliver political freedom, let alone prosperity for the Papuan people. In many instances it has simply left behind school buildings that have no students or community healthcare centres without doctors. Economically, it has only benefited a handful of the elite through infrastructure projects, but failed to address human development as a whole.
Ethnic differences arising from the more than 250 or so tribes that exit in West Papua or the lack of a "Papuan language" can no longer be used as grounds to claim that West Papua does not exist as a "nation". Or likewise the divisions of the Papuan people as a nation, because the development of the Papuan people's movement has demonstrated increasingly close and meaningful social and political bonds.
Why? Of course what is most essential is the oppression of political freedoms (freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of speech, and freedom of thinking) along with the exploitation of natural resources by international companies (such as Freeport) that are affiliated with the Indonesian government and are destroying West Papua's environment. Not to mention the exploitation of the Papuan people who earn lower wages than non-Papuans.
Or the share of profits from mining. International companies are "ransacking" Papua's huge natural wealth and human labour. Yet the tiny share of profits that remain in the country are then being "robbed" yet again by the Indonesian government.
Let us look at how the entity of Papua has developed from an "embryo" to an increasingly solid nation.
In the interests of stealing profits from the exploitation of Papua's natural resources, the Pepera was implemented through coercion and manipulation. Following this, those who demanded historical truth were repressed by the military. The interests of international corporations were opened up by the militarism of Suharto's New Order dictatorship through the destruction of the movement and the arrest of Ferry Awom in 1967, who along with others had declared the OPM two years earlier.
Arnold Ap, a Papuan activist and artist in the cultural movement in 1984 was eventually arrested by Kopashanda (now Kopassus, the Army's Special Forces). Arnold Ap's body was found sprawled in the middle of the jungle in April 1994. This was then followed by killings in Enarotali, Obano, Moanemani and Wamena resulting in as many as 10,000 Papuan fleeing to Papua New Guinea (PNG) to seek safety in the years 1977-1978 and the early 1980s. A Military Operational Zone (DOM) came into force in West Papua between 1978 and October 5, 1998.
In 1988 Dr. Thomas Wanggai, who declared Papua independent in 1988, died in detention at Cipinang prison in Jakarta in 1996. The case that still attracts political attention to this day is the Abepura case which resulted in the death of scores of people as well as the more recent bloody Paniai case. These cases do not yet include the shooting of other West Papuan pro-democracy activists, activists that have been jailed for years such as Filep Karma, and the murder of Mako Tabuni. Finally, the more than 1,000 Papuan activists, the majority of which are members of the KNPB, that have been arrested and jailed. Not to mention the murder of unidentified individuals who have been shot or run down by vehicles in the middle of the road.
Rather than providing more democratic space, the government of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, through former Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Panjaitan (who was recently replaced by former General Wiranto), has allowed an increase in the number of Regional Military Commands (Kodam) and issued discriminatory statements against the ordinary Papuan people.
The massive economic exploitation of natural resources in West Papua is clearly visible. As is taking place in the forests of Wasior, illegal logging by the military and various companies is occurring on a massive scale resulting in the eviction of traditional communities. Protests by these traditional communities have ended in shootings and the death of six people. Not to mention the massive Freeport MacMoran mine, which is largely owned by the US, which began operations in the 1960s.
The Freeport gold and copper mine actually receives tax benefits of between US$700-800 million and as much as US$1 billion annually. Not to mention the various tribes in Papua that have lost their land and livelihoods because of the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), as in the case of the Mahuze clan in Merauke.
They have suffered brutal repression and the destruction of their environment which for them is the "Mother" of the Papuan nation. The Papuan People have experienced racial discrimination both in their own land as well as in other parts of Indonesia such as Manado, North Sulawesi and in the Central Java city of Yogyakarta, as in the recent case of Papuan students at the Papuan Student Dormitory in Kemasan, Yogyakarta. They also suffer racial discrimination in the workplace, both in government institutions and the private sector.
As if this is not enough, the total number of Papuans is steadily declining. Data for the years 2013 and 2014 show that the number of indigenous Papuans was around 1.7 million while the number of non-Papuan migrants stood at 2 million. Data for 2015, up until May, shows the number of indigenous Papuans has declined to 1.5 million while non-Papuans have increased to 2.3 million. According to a statement by the AMP, the number of indigenous Papuans has declined by around 200,000 over just a few months.
The decline in the number of indigenous Papuans is being caused by systematic and massive murder, an atmosphere of fear created by the Indonesian military resulting in migration to PNG, deaths due to HIV and AIDS, alcohol related health problems and child malnutrition.
For the Papuan people, being part of Indonesia for almost 50 years has not brought happiness, but instead physical and psychological repression and the destruction of their "Mother". So what then is the meaning of being part of Indonesia? Increasingly it has no meaning. Increasingly they feel as if they are not part of Indonesia. And that means a growing sentiment for self-determination as an independent nation.
The capitalist economic and political relations in Papua have integrated the Papuan people from various tribes and clans in the markets, schools and universities, hospitals and other places of association. Yet the militaristic repression, the destruction of the environment along with their organisational resistance has provided a material bases for West Papua's development as a nation.
As defenders of democracy and human rights, recognising West Papua as a nation, supporting and giving solidarity to the right to self-determination through a referendum for the Papuan nation, is the way by which to free the Papuan people from the militaristic repression of the Indonesian government, so that the violence will end, so that there will be peace, freedom and prosperity in the land and nation of Papua.
Because of this therefore, we call on our comrades, both as organisations and as individuals, to unite and take a stand in supporting the right to self-determination through a referendum for the Papuan people, to consolidate in building an Indonesian People's Solidarity movement for the Nation of West Papua.
[Surya Anta is the spokesperson of the People's Liberation Party (PPR). Translated by James Balowski for the Indoleft News Service. The original title of the report was "Seruan Konsolidasi Rakyat Indonesia bagi Bangsa Papua".]

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When foreign journalists are banned from an Occupied Land, who better to tell the story than the people who live it. Your donations support and help deliver training for a free and independent media in Papua, safe from harm from those who want to prevent the story getting out. We are entirely non-profit and rely on your support to continue our work. Please donate generously.

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